This Herb
Produces Berries, Resembling White Gooseberries, But Entirely Tasteless.
No One Knows How This Herb Grows, As There Is
No ground or land about
the place where it is found floating on the water, neither can it be
supposed
To come from the bottom, as the sea is very deep, and is in
many places quite unfathomable. This sea-weed begins to be seen in the
lat. of 34 deg. N. where it is so thick that it seems as if islands, but is
not to be met with in any other part of the ocean.
The Cape de Verd islands, when first discovered by the Portuguese in
1572, were all desert and uninhabited, but they now inhabit several of
them. They are ten in number, St Jago, St Lucia, St Vincent, St Antonio,
St Nicolas, Ilha Blanca, Ilha de Sal, Ilha de Maio, Ilha de Fogo, and
Bonavista. They now afford plenty of rice, flour, Tartarian wheat,
oranges, lemons, citrons, bananas, ananas or pine-apples, ignames,
batatas, melons, cucumbers, pompions, garden and wild figs, and several
other sorts of fruits. They have vineyards also, which produce ripe
grapes twice a year; and have abundance of cattle, both great and small,
but especially goats. The capital city is St Jago, in the island of that
name, in which resides the governor who commands over all these islands
under the King of Portugal. It is also the residence of an archbishop,
whose see extends over all these islands, and over all the conquests of
the Portuguese on this side of the Cape of Good Hope.
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